I adore badgers but we have to cull them - if only to save our hedgehogs

Of all the characters in The Wind In The Willows — Kenneth Grahame’s wonderful story with a glorious cast of animals from woodland, field and riverbank — Mr Badger is my favourite.

Gruff, irascible and in many ways a miserable old bugger, he’s also someone who looks out for his friends and offers stern advice when needed.

My interest in badgers was first kindled on my mother’s knee with the tales of Rupert Bear and sensible, waistcoat-wearing Bill Badger. In my teens, I read Tales Of A Devon Village by Henry Williamson, author of Tarka The Otter.

Not only do badgers spread TB to cattle, they are fearsome predators and can devastate wildlife if their numbers get out of hand - which they have

One of the first stories in the book was a harrowing description of a badger dig, in which men dug out the terrified creature from its sett — or home — to kill it. The story was so desperately sad and savage.

Like almost everyone in Britain, I love badgers. I have spent hours studying them in the wild in counties all over England, being bitten by plagues of mosquitoes as I watched them playing and busying themselves about their setts.

Every time I see them, I never cease to marvel over what magnificent beasts they are, with their stripes, their barrel-shaped bodies and sturdy little legs.

And yet despite my admiration and the fact that I pride myself, above all, as a wildlife conservationist, I believe a badger cull is essential to the preservation of our countryside.

Like almost everyone in Britain, I love badgers. Of all the characters in The Wind In The Willows, Mr Badger is my favourite

Because not only do badgers spread TB to cattle, they are fearsome predators and can devastate wildlife if their numbers get out of hand — which they have.

My first actual contact with badgers came 30 years ago on Dartmoor, at Laughter Hole Farm, where I met a most remarkable woman who ran a badger refuge.

Ruth Murray’s farm bungalow was absolutely bursting with badgers. In every room and every outbuilding there were badgers. Beautiful, contented badgers that loved eating biscuits as a treat.

Ruth rescued them from property development sites. Unfortunately, although she could take them in, the Ministry of Agriculture would not allow her to release them in case they had TB. At that time there was no way of testing for TB in live badgers, so her badger colony just grew and grew.

One of my most amazing experiences came when I found two lost badger cubs in a field of barley — with the combine harvester about to start work.

They were too small to find their way out of the crop.

Not only do badgers spread TB to cattle,
they are fearsome predators and can devastate wildlife if their numbers
get out of hand — which they have

I took them home and fed them on milk, fruit and chopped-up cat food. They were fantastic, but after a few days they escaped and I never saw them again. I hoped, somehow, they found their mother again.

For all their attractions, though, we should not be fooled: badgers are wild animals and can never really be tame.

Mike Fitzgerald, a former editor of BBC TV’s Countryfile, had a dreadful experience when he met a supposedly tame badger called Boris. He went to pick Boris up, and for his trouble he was taken, bloodied, to hospital for two skin grafts and numerous stitches, while poor Boris was put down.

Because of our love of the badger, and because of everyone’s understandable horror of the once-common practice of baiting the poor creatures, brocks are a protected species under the 1992 Protection of Badgers Act.

The inevitable consequence has been that the badger population has soared.

When I met Ruth Murray 30 years ago, she reckoned that the British population of badgers was about 50,000. Now, figures within Defra suggest that number has risen to 900,000, or even one million.

And there is overwhelming evidence that badgers are infecting cattle with TB. The dramatic rise in the population of badgers has coincided with a surge in the number of cattle testing positive for TB.

Even if just one cow tests positive for TB, movement restrictions are brought in so none can be sold from the farm, which can result in a devastating loss of income for farmers

In 1986, 235 cattle were slaughtered after testing positive. By 2012, this had risen to 38,010 and the cost in compensation to more than £500,000.

For farmers, the discovery of any TB-infected cattle can be soul-destroying.

Opponents of the cull say they get compensated for slaughtered animals, but most farmers have deep feelings for their animals that go beyond money.

And even if just one cow tests positive, movement restrictions are brought in so none can be sold from the farm, which can result in a devastating loss of income.

One dairy farmer from Herefordshire wrote to me recently saying: ‘Every 60 days we kill more cows! What about their welfare? What about the calves inside them? What about the calves they are suckling?

‘No country in the world has ever controlled TB without dealing with it in the wildlife.’

Badgers are particularly fond of eating hedgehogs

But the boom in the badger population is having another dramatic affect which both Government and conservationists are trying to ignore.

Badgers are omnivores. This means they eat anything going: flowers, fruit, bulbs, the eggs and young of wild birds, the nests and larvae of bumble bees, domestic poultry, even small lambs.

And they are particularly fond of hedgehogs.

Yes, Bill Badger loves eating Mrs Tiggywinkle. In fact, many scientists now believe that unless something is done, hedgehogs could be wiped out in parts of the country.

In his book Badger, Professor Timothy Roper quotes the work of an Oxford graduate, Patrick Doncaster.

‘The absence of hedgehogs from rural areas in most of western and central England is a consequence of predation by badgers,’ he says. Professor Pat Morris, in The New Hedgehog Book, writes: ‘There is no escaping the conclusion that infinite numbers of both hedgehogs and badgers cannot co-exist… The implications for hedgehog survival are serious.’

Dr Vince Lea, in charge of wildlife monitoring at the Countryside Restoration Trust’s Lark Rise Farm in Cambridgeshire, says: ‘There is no doubt that badgers eat hedgehogs, and if there are too many badgers you won’t have any hedgehogs.’

Yet all-too-often, conservation bodies and animal charities such as the RSPCA — which condemns the cull — refuse to confront this problem. How deeply ironic it is that in this month’s edition of BBC Wildlife magazine, there is a vote for Britain’s favourite indigenous species. In first place comes the hedgehog. And yes, in second place, the badger.

But it is not just hedgehogs that suffer from badger predation. The eggs and young of ground-nesting birds such as skylarks, grey partridge and meadow pipits are vulnerable, as are the nests of the rare wood warbler and nightingale in woodlands.

On Salisbury Plain, according to wildlife wardens from both English Nature and the RSPB, badgers are a great problem to nesting stone curlews. But the RSPB headquarters refuses to admit this publicly.

For all their attractions, we should not be fooled: badgers are wild animals and can never really be tame.

As a warden said to me recently: ‘Headquarters are terrified of telling the truth about badgers in case it loses us members. The point is, do we want informed members or ignorant members? We really do need a cull.’

Recently, I visited a farm in the Cherwell Valley, Oxfordshire, where the conservation-minded farmer and his son, George and Chris Fenemore, farm with wildlife in mind.

They take part in a ‘Breeding Wader’ project to encourage breeding curlews, lapwing and redshank. They are allowed to control foxes, crows and magpies, but the nests of the project’s target birds are in constant danger from badgers, as well as buzzards and kites.

In addition, George has 47 beehives producing 1.5 tons of honey per year, which are also under constant badger attack.

Many opponents of the cull claim a simple vaccination of badgers against TB would solve the problem. Yet that would not only be horrendously expensive — at an average cost of £600 per badger per year — but would allow the badger population to boom still more.

At the moment, there is a tragedy going on. A contagious disease has been allowed to spread through domestic animals and wildlife, while hedgehogs and other species are in mortal danger because of the soaring badger population.

The truth is that proper husbandry and proper conservation have taken second place to badger-hugging anthropomorphism.

As a farmer and a conservationist, I love badgers. But we have to face the fact that there are simply too many of them.